A Chemical Regime for Biotech

• In Event: Products of Biotecnoscience: Modified Living Beings Used in Health and Agriculture Activities - II

Abstract

Since the 1980s and what is now called the “biotech turn, biotechnologies have become a privileged site of investigation for STS. The analytical contributions with the prefix “bio” insist on the way biotech marks the rise of a bio-constitutionalism (Jasanoff, 2011), a bio-capitalism (Rajan, 2006), a bio-economy (Cooper, 2008), or bio-sociabilities (Rabinow, 2005).

In spite of the richness of these studies, we believe they produce two blindspots. Firstly, biotech studies are mainly reduced to an informational and molecular vision of living organisms inherited from molecular biology. Secondly, in many ways this "molecular" world is synonymous with a "new" world where innovation and novelty are the watchwords.

Lying on this statement, this paper proposes a change of perspective in the analysis of new biotechnologies by paying a special attention to pre-existing forms of knowledge (fermentation, microbiology or enzymology), as well as uses and production (Edgerton, 2008). We follow a small molecule, L-Methionine, which is both an old compound used and synthetized by the chemical industry, but also a promising molecule for synthetic biology.

This case study allows us identify a chemical knowledge regime for biotech coexisting with the abundantly described informational regime. This regime is characterized by 1- a chemical ontology of life where enzyme is the main epistemic thing; 2- a high degree of social and technical containment; 3- the centrality of industry and existing markets in the knowledge production; 4- and specific innovation policies focused on national interests.

This communication is based on an investigation combining archives, a two months ethnography, as well as on interviews with scientist, industrials and projects managers.

Author

• Benjamin Raimbault, Institute For Research and Innovation in Society